Hands-on with Audubon
Bethany Sheffer and Bao the box turtle entertained and educated attendees of Sharon Audubon's presentation at Norfolk Library Wednesday, Jan. 31.
Riley Klein
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Artist Christy Gast
Photo by Natalie Baxter
That sense of shared purpose is at the heart of the invitation Gast extended to artists Natalie Baxter and Janis Stemmermann to process a bumper crop of Japanese indigo (Persicaria tinctoria) at her studio this fall. All three artists’ practices intersect through material, process and an interest in the handmade. Gast and Stemmermann have collaborated on a series of hand-knit vests dyed with black walnut, available through Stemmermann’s store, Russell Janis. Baxter is a Wassaic Project residency and fellowship alum, who is leading a community quilting workshop there on Nov. 15. She also co-directs “Cottage Courses” with artist Polly Shindler, a series of hands-on artmaking workshops throughout the region.
“Lisa Dachinger of Hilltop Farm & Fiber Arts north of Pittsfield, Massachusetts had an abundance of indigo this year,” said Gast of her learning about the crop’s availability.In two trips to the farm, Gast harvested the plants and began experimenting with the ancient art and science of extracting pigment from the plants and transforming it into rich, layered blues.
Artists Christy Gast, left, and Natalie Baxter in Gast's studioPhoto by Natalia Zukerman
“There are a lot of steps,” Gast noted with a laugh, as vats of aerated indigo bubbled in the corner of the studio. The process is slow and physical, dependent on timing, temperature and a kind of faith in chemistry. The freshly harvested Japanese indigo leaves are first soaked in warm water and left to ferment for several days. The plant matter is then removed, the solution is strained and the pH is raised with the addition of calcium hydroxide, and then the mixture is aerated, poured back and forth between containers until it oxidizes and the pigment turns dark blue. After the indigo settles to the bottom, the resulting paste is filtered, dried and ground into powder. Only then is it ready for dyeing.
But as Stemmermann pointed out, “It’s not a dye. It’s a coating and reaction.” Indigo’s elusive chemistry means each piece is unpredictable, shaped as much by chance as by control. To achieve a deep, saturated blue, “you have to layer it and dip it up to eight times,” she explained.
Each artist uses dye in their work, albeit quite differently, yet all share a deep sensitivity to material and process. “There is a seasonality to textile work,” said Baxter, referring to dye plants.“First, there’s the planting. And then you wait for them to grow, you harvest them, you dye the fabric and then it’s wintertime.” During quilt season when our attention turns inward, the patient, hands-on process becomes a meditation on slowness for Baxter, mirroring the rhythm of the earth and a quiet longing to move with it.
Processing Japanese indigoPhoto by Natalie Baxter
For Gast, working with plant dyes is a way to align artistic practice with ecology and activism. “I’m working on a project that will be showing at Mass MoCA in 2027,” she explained. “It’s a collaborative opera about peatlands for which I’m producing a textile installation that functions as the curtains. I’m using as many natural and regional processes as possible because our work has to do with local-to-global activism and conservation. There is a chemical alchemy in peatlands, which despite covering just 3% of the Earth’s surface, capture more than twice the carbon of all the planet’s forests combined. There’s a direct poetic alignment between plant dye processes and peatlands, which preserved some of the earliest textiles we know of. And the color palette is ancient, both familiar and uncanny.”
There’s a certain chaos in balancing experimentation with intent. For Gast, Baxter, and Stemmermann, this first attempt at pigment extraction has been as much about curiosity as outcome, a communal act of making, rooted in patience, experimentation and discovery.
To find out more about these artists, visit: christygast.com, nataliebaxter.com and janisstemmermann.com
